MoJo Author Feeds: Judith Lewis | Mother Joneshttp://www.motherjones.com/rss/authors/12036
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enThe Luxury of True Reproductive Choicehttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/luxury-true-reproductive-choice
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<html><body><p>If we take <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9522_palin_media_alaska_press_conference.html">Sarah Palin</a> at her word&mdash;and despite the <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9535_palin_alaskan_independence_party_connection.html">blog chatter</a> to which I sacrificed my Labor Day weekend, there's no reason why we shouldn't&mdash;she learned last December, four months into her pregnancy, that the baby she was carrying possessed an extra 21st chromosome, the cause of Down syndrome. Then she made an unusual decision, one made by only 10 percent of US women who receive a similar prenatal diagnosis: She decided to <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9517_sarah_palin_daughter_bristol_baby.html">carry her baby</a> to term.</p>
<p>No doubt this was a difficult personal decision, made in consultation with her doctor and with the advice of her husband, Todd. As a <a href="/news/outfront/2007/01/suffragette_city.html">dedicated foe</a> of abortion rights, Palin might have leaned against termination from the start, but if it were all a slam dunk one has to wonder why she had any prenatal genetic tests at all. I suspect that when Palin and her family received the news they agonized late into several nights before deciding they could take on the challenge of raising a disabled child.</p></body></html>
<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/politics/2008/09/luxury-true-reproductive-choice"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>PoliticsElectionspalinmccainSarah PalinWed, 03 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0000Judith Lewis12037 at http://www.motherjones.comThe Nuclear Optionhttp://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/05/nuclear-option
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<html><body><p>A decade and a year after Enrico Fermi demonstrated the first atomic fission chain reaction, President Dwight D. Eisenhower went before the United Nations General Assembly to avert an apocalypse. Other nations now had in their hands the weapon with which the United States had pulverized two Japanese cities; altruistic scientists and eager investors both had pressured the president to share the technology for peaceful uses. And so Eisenhower had little choice on that December day in 1953 but to announce a new purpose for the force inside the atom: Properly monitored and generously financed, he declared in his "Atoms for Peace" address, fission could be harnessed "to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world."</p></body></html>
<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/environment/2008/05/nuclear-option"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>EnvironmentThu, 01 May 2008 07:00:00 +0000Judith Lewis15433 at http://www.motherjones.comHow We Almost Blew Up Ohiohttp://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio
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<html><body><p>After inspecting a reactor during a refueling outage in late April 2000, Andrew Siemaszko, a systems engineer at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio, wrote on an official plant work order the four words that would one day ruin his life: "Work performed without deviation." Two years later, during a subsequent refueling outage, workers discovered that boric acid deposits had gnawed a rusty, "pineapple-sized" hole almost clear through the six-inch-thick steel cap bolted to the top of the reactor. Had the corrosion gone a third of an inch deeper, through the steel cladding inside the reactor vessel, radioactive steam would have flooded the reactor's containment dome, and Davis-Besse might have become the next Three Mile Island.
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<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>EnvironmentEnergyNukesMon, 28 Apr 2008 07:00:00 +0000Judith Lewis15424 at http://www.motherjones.comSlow Train to Yucca Mountainhttp://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/slow-train-yucca-mountain
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<html><body><p>High-level nuclear waste, the detritus of a half-century of civilian nuclear power in the United States, was supposed to have someplace to go by now. It was supposed to have a designated hole in the ground to contain it, according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, with infrastructure to transport and store it, staff to secure and protect it. In 2008, we were not supposed to still be debating where to put the fuel rods from nuclear reactors once they could no longer fission efficiently.
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But we are.
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<p style="font-size: 1.083em;"><a href="/environment/2008/04/slow-train-yucca-mountain"><strong><em>Continue Reading &raquo;</em></strong></a></p>EnvironmentEnergyNukesMon, 28 Apr 2008 07:00:00 +0000Judith Lewis15445 at http://www.motherjones.com